Questioning the coming Internet clog

One of the nation's top authorities on global Internet traffic growth says his latest data show no reason to fear network capacity shortages, as traffic growth may even be slightly decelerating. Updating data collected from Internet exchanges around the world, professor Andrew Odlyzko, director of the University of Minnesota's Interdisciplinary Digital Technology Center, reported late last week that Internet traffic rates in the US and globally are continuing to grow at a rate between 50% and 60% (largely unchanged from recent years) -- rapid growth that nonetheless belies dire predictions of an escalation that would clog today's networks. Among the factors limiting Internet traffic growth, Odlyzko said, are the pace of broadband deployment, which he said is "not that fast" in some countries, including the US. But in other places, such as Hong Kong, where deployed bandwidth is much greater, traffic growth rates are slowing. Odlyzko now estimates average US monthly Internet traffic to be between 900 and 1550 petabytes per month, up from 750 to 1250 petabytes at the end of last year. Though traffic growth tends to be higher in the second half of each year than the first, Odlyzko said the industry might consider focusing more on stimulating traffic growth rather than fearing it.